Sunday, June 7, 2009

We moved in to this house in early October. And since then it has been bad news for appliances. I just need to recap this for myself because it is an amazing string of unfortunate events. Let me start by saying this house was built about 4 years ago, occupied by the owners for about a year, then occupied by at least 2 other families.

October: Garbage disposal broken when we moved in. The disposal had a huge crack in it. And it was not the original disposal in this house. This should have been a sign of things to come.

November: Shower head has less than half the holes working.

December: Oven/stove is so off on temperature we have a service man come out to adjust the temp. That doesn't work, but he does convert the oven to work with propane instead of natural gas, even though it hadn't been done originally and had been burning improperly for 4 years. That was just 4 years of carbon monoxide leaking into the house. Oven/stove still sucks ass. There is no low setting on the burners and it cannot be adjusted. Now the broiler drawer is falling apart. :D

January: Dishwasher stops working while we have company. Takes landlord 10 days to get someone out here to replace it.

February: Refrigerator filter light comes on. We replace it with the exact same model and it leaks for about 3 weeks, but eventually works fine. The filter light never goes off. Latch breaks in the closed position on the largest windows in the house that provides great cross ventilation; landlord opted to do nothing; fortunately it was too cold most days to open.

March: Jack gives up on his computer. It won't stay on for more than a few minutes at a time. We make do with just one computer.

April: My Kitchen Aid blender dies. No replacement. New shower head becomes so clogged half of the holes aren't working, and the previously pleasant rain shower is turned into stingy darts; cleaned out with a bottle of CLR run through it; now works almost as good as new, but not. I thinking there is a hard water problem in this house.

May: Cuisinart coffeemaker self-clean light comes on. We clean it. It dies just over a year after it was purchased. Replaced immediately. Our cordless phone handsets start dying. Jack attempts to reformat his external hard drive to work with the Mac; he loses everything on it, meaning tons of stuff from Iraq that was only on that drive. Jack attempts to reformat his mega iPod as well; loses everything on it. Our only computer falls out of the back of the car after our last trip to SoCal. The base is cracked so the battery is popping out.

June: Found a tool to open latch on large window. Get great cool evening breeze again! Yesterday, the sliding adjuster on waffle iron received as Christmas gift less than 6 months ago breaks off, but it looks like it might still work, for awhile.

The TV and accessories seem to be working fine. The washer and dryer are sufficient. Water heater works very well. Heating and cooling systems are working. Oh, wait. We haven't yet turned on the AC this season. I'll let you know if that goes. I can't lose my cool!

It has been a difficult 8 months for things in this house. It is so ridiculous that at this point, we are taking bets on what will go next. And just for fun, we are planning on renewing the lease in October!